Saturday, 17 May 2014

Open Letter

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Dear John Lyndon Sullivan,

Hello! I’m one of those whatevers you’ve
read about. I hope it’s not presumptuous of me to assume that you don’t really
know any of us- I just get the feeling you might not. If you’re still
determined to be a politician you may end up pretending that some of your best
friends are etc etc etc, of course, and without doubt you’ll have met some of
us. Maybe you had an unmarried uncle who was quite gentle and fond of baking.
Think back.

Anyway, I’m writing to take you up on your
kind offer to shoot one of us, so that the other 99 (you may need to re-check
your statistics) change their minds over whether the whole gay thing is a
matter of genetics or education. I’m happy to be your guinea pig in this
fascinating social experiment.

I’m guessing you’d be shooting me in the
shoulder or the leg, rather than somewhere actually fatal; for elected
(or even non-elected) representatives actually to murder fellow citizens who are innocent of any
crime is frowned upon in our namby-pamby liberal society. But even so, it’ll
send out a powerful message. If we can get a date, time and location fixed,
I’ll try and get as many ‘poofters’ as I can to come and watch you prove your
point.

A couple of things you need to know:
firstly, I won’t back down. You may have run away with the idea that we’re a
sissy, physically cowardly lot. You might assume that I’d turn up, pretend to
be ready to take a shot, and then run off and write a musical or press flowers
or something. But just think- if I did that, your hypothesis wouldn’t be
properly tested! I am committed to this project, and although being shot will
doubtless sting a bit, I can’t wait to find if it actually works the way you
suggest. The idea of standing there, bleeding from a flesh wound, while so many
of my friends instantly demarry, fall out of love with their partners, or just
plain stop fancying each other is too fascinating to pass up. And besides, you
might be surprised. We’re quite hardy, as a bunch. Some of the things we do to
each other for pleasure can be really bloody painful.

Another thing to bear in mind is that you’d
be pretty well disposed towards me, if the rest of your party is anything to go
by. I’m white, I speak nicely, I pay my taxes, and I’ve never been caught being
Romanian. Admittedly, your party also doesn’t want me to get married to a man
(and if I saw the error of my ways and got married to a woman, it wouldn’t want
her to get any maternity pay should she try and bring forth some more white,
nicely-spoken non-Romanians). But once I’m shot, your party will have no
worries about me getting free medical treatment. That’s why I’m perfect for
your experiment- if you found yourself shooting, say, a Frenchman, on English soil you’d object to your tax money
going towards stopping him from dying. But you can shoot me without any such
worries. At least for now; if you shot me in a world where your party were in
government and had privatized the NHS, you might have a few worries about
whether I could afford to have someone pop a plaster on it.

You should also remember that you will get
arrested and probably imprisoned. Your party is a big fan of the rule of law,
after all, and we can’t have people shooting each other on the street and
getting away with it, even in the name of science. The law seems to
be less important when it comes to corporations, admittedly, but I’ve yet to
hear any of your colleagues argue for the total deregulation of, say, theft, or
mugging. Well, it’s different, isn’t it?

The last thing I’d like gently to
mention is the 1980s. It was in that decade that the whatevers faced up to
something a little more dangerous than a wannabe councillor with a shotgun.
Millions of us, worldwide, died, and hundreds of thousands of others continue both to
die from and to live with a disease which threatened our community more than
any law ever had. You may have heard about it- it’s not unique to us, it can
happen to anyone, even straight white men. It’s laying waste to the third world
even now, with no distinctions of sexual orientation, belief or lifestyle
(although you may not be hugely informed about the third world because, you
know, kipper and all). Anyway, even when that terrible, desperate nightmare
stalked us, even when it briefly looked like it was stalking ONLY us, we didn’t
change our minds or our orientations. Quite the opposite. We wrote and we sang
and we fought and we protested and above all we loved. We loved, and we carry
on loving, and we always will.

111 comments:

A beautifully articulate, scathingly sarcastic and timely post. I presume you won't receive a response. Just know that, as a straight man with some idea of what is actually right and wrong, I'll be joining the other 99 and fighting against homophobic tyranny wherever I see it.

'We loved, and we carry on loving, and we always will.' Wonderful words for a wonderful community. Loved your letter. I agree with Adam in saying that I'd be there to fight with the other 99 as well. Thank you for finding words for this!

Hmmm... perhaps it should be a duel - after all, the same logic should apply and shooting one "straight" white man should make another 99 change their orientation (maybe it make them change their colour as well), no?

What if us straight blokes all see how cool it is to take a bullet for science and become gay. However i hope this experiment does go ahead cuz apparently all the gay people gave britain shit weather and if you were all straight I could get out in my garden more. .

I agree with Kayla. To be truly scientific this needs a control. Perhaps if someone were to shoot the councillor in the shoulder too, to see if that changed the minds of 99 "poofters" about whether sexual orientation is genetic. And he has to be willing to write down his findings and methodology once the experiment has ended. After all, we cannot let mere gunshot wounds deter us from the path of good science.

Excellent blog. Please do what you can to get the guy to read it. Facebook him. Email him. Print it out on reams of paper and dump it on his doorstep - all councillors publish their home addresses to my knowledge. Oh and an antique cigarette case might stop a bullet if positioned opportunely

Well written response. Got tearful reading this out loud to my partner. It absolutely sickens me that this type of person is still apparent in 21st century society. It angers me that these ignorant bigots even get airspace and newspace. John lyndon sullivan - youre a disgrace to your family and to your country - you make me sick.

Would you mind awfully if myself and pretty much every one I know attended? We wouldn't all fit in to the other '99 people' as most of us are not gay nor care if anyone else is or not. What we don't like is branding swathes of people inferior on the basis of who or how they love. Straight/bi/gay/asexual people pay taxes, serve in the forces, teach, heal the sick, murder, steal, assault etc just as likely as any other human being and I'm pretty sure it's absolutely nothing to do with their sexual or emotional preferences.

Some of us speak gently and are rather fond of baking, but not all of us. Some might assist in a citizen's arrest, some of us may even attempt violent retribution (I really hope not).

Irrespective of what happens we'd really like to be there to represent humanity in general and the common sense in not lumping whole portions of humanity as 'lesser' on account of something so unimportant as to what gets them off.

Everyone who is as outraged about this waste of space of a human being should print out this letter and post it to the aforementioned itiot's home address, which is readily available to anyone with a search engine...

John Lyndon Sullivan17 Boundary Place CorseGloucestershireGL19 3RG

Please share this comment with the post above and let's see if you can get a response if we bombard him with letters from people with a correctly functioning moral compass!

I'd love to attend but, what with me being a fluffy-brained woman and all, I may see something shiny, rush towards it excitedly and find myself accidentally in the line of fire. If I were shot then 99 other women may rethink the gender they were born into then who would do the cleaning up? I'll just stay at home and think about shoes to be on the safe side.

I wonder what rock he's been living under to not know that plenty of 'whatevers' have been shot (beaten/lynched/assaulted/murdered/etc.) for being who they are (or suspected to be) and that certainly hasn't changed the 'other 99'.

If it's so easy to choose your sexuality I'd suggest that he try out being gay for a week to show all the poofters how easy it is.

As one of the remaining 99, I'd be happy to join in the experiment too. I should warn though that I am alarmingly stubborn and am also becoming increasingly vocal against bigoted morons. So as has already been stated, I *will* keep loving, extra hole in me or not. Fire away!

Such a beautifully written letter, just the perfect amount of irony and sarcasm given a magic sprinkling of fairy dust ! Bravo to the author and thank you to the heterosexual comments, wonderfully witty and help restore my faith in human nature. Love and best wishes to all !

Good call. How wonderfully heroic. Sod cleaning behind the fridge I think I could attend this experiment. Do you mind if my motives are not entirely altruistic. You see if one of the 99 does turn hetero I could get a date out of it, and if they don't I could justifiably punch the UKipper on the nose for telling lies, which is something I have been meaning to do anyway. x

Working in small towns in Gloucestershire, I am happy to confirm this is a very small minority or smug self satisfied individuals who are totally bigoted and strangely feel their particular brand of rudeness or ill informed drivel will change the world . They are a minority and I take great comfort in that fact. when they open their mouths a share some dated view point most people visibly look bored, roll their eyes or say well that is rubbish .That is real progress !I would like to suggest the following experiment to John Lyndon Sullivan why not take your own advice and why don't you stroll out with some dogs and your copy of country life and stand in the village common and ask ninety nine of your closest minded friends to watch as you are shot and see how perhaps the idea of a bullet might influence their opinions ? Politics is about serving your community is it not?..

I had to read Sullivan's post twice as it beggars belief in this day and age there are still morons out there spouting this sort of intolerance. I would like to suggest an alternative experiment too. Round up 100 UKIP supporters and shoot one of them and see how many of the remaining 99 decide to change their vote.

Reading this makes me want to shoot you... a smile because you have shown how stupid these people are, the only thing that wipes the smile off my face is thinking how many people believe this kind of person is right, but I suppose they are entitled to have their opinion, but I'm keeping mine as I enjoy my life the way I live it, and I hope more people think this way too

I always appreciate a well-written letter. This one is (to co-opt a Britishism) bloody brilliant: perfectly pitched to your ostensible addressee (and thus to the hostile audience composed of thoughtless bigots like him), AND to those of us cheering for you the whole way through.

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About Me

If you're reading this you almost certainly know all about me anyway. So you'll know that I live in London and write things for the telly, stage and radio, and sometimes act in them and other things. And you'll probably know that I do a lot of consultancy work with businesses, too, but there's a whole website about that so I probably won't be mentioning it much around here.